Welcome back! The TV airing of Ore no Imouto ga konna ni kawaii wake ga nai Season 2 is now over, and what did we learn? Was there any resolution to the question of who Kyousuke has picked to be in love with? Let’s find out.

So did Kyousuke Pick Anyone?

Super Bunny!

In a word? No. This episode was entirely a flashback from Kirino’s point of view, from a time when they were both much younger to just a few years ago. As such, it mostly focused on the relationship that Kyousuke and Kirino had when they were elementary school kids. And that was a relationship where Kirino thought Kyousuke was the coolest older brother ever, and always wanted to be like him. And more importantly, have his attention. So when he grows up some, and decides that he doesn’t really want his younger sister hanging around anymore, he says that she can only go with him if she can keep up, which of course she can’t. But the humiliation of being left behind makes her determined to work hard to never lose to him again.

She wasn’t going to lose in the bath either…

A change in Kyousuke

Time for a lecture

But while Kirino is working hard to get up to Kyousuke’s level, for some reason Kyousuke stops being so amazing. Finally confronting him for being a lazy bum, Kirino decides that it’s Manami’s fault, and indeed part of it is. And Manami says that Kirino shouldn’t expect him to change back, because he never was really like that in the first place. And she’s right. It’s not surprising that grade school girls aren’t the best at judging people, but Kirino thinks she’s lost the person she looks up to, and starts to loathe Kyousuke, leading us to about where the series began.

Actually, she’s just jealous of Manami the whole time.

So where are they now?

Kirino realizes that maybe he’s not that bad

Throughout the series, a lot of things have happened to Kyousuke, and he’s mostly gotten through them fine. And that’s made Kirino realize that no matter who she thought he was before, he really wasn’t. But who he is now works to do his best for her, and really for everyone. So where does this leave the series? Is Kirino really in love with Kyousuke like that? Even knowing his limitations and his faults and that he’s not awesome? It’s really hard for me to say that she could love him ‘like that’. She obviously is back to admiring him as a person, even if her love of siscon eroge seems kind of off. I couldn’t tell if the show was trying to say that she was placing herself in the little sister role, which would be odd given the way those games work (as Yozora opined “…your games that are about nothing but sticking it into girls…”). Does she really get hot and bothered over Kyousuke? Is her animosity towards him based only on what Manami said?

If she was fine with them, would she have to dress up like this? Although this wouldn’t fool Ayase for a second…

Well, there really wasn’t any conclusion, so I guess we wait until mid-August for the three additional episodes of the series to finish up. I thought this episode did give a lot of background (not as much as I might have thought given the spoilers I knew), but ultimately it didn’t really point one way or another. It seemed more like Kirino had resigned herself to the brother she had, and realized that he wasn’t that bad. But I just can’t get past that it would seem to be a lot of self-deception if she really does have the hots for him.

Congratulations on finishing your first season as a blogger and your second series on Metanorn (this and Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Bride).

While it’s possible some viewers weren’t happy with this episode, I was grateful for it because I haven’t seen the first season and wanted to know how Kirino became the way she is and know what made the relationship between her and Kyousuke so rigid even though you can see they still care for one another. She confessed to being into eroge but it became apparent she didn’t want to admit having a brother complex.

One thing I didn’t understand though. Did Kirino dye her hair color or was she naturally becoming a dirty blonde? During the flashback reaching its end, they jumped from one color to the next. Maybe we’ll actually get some closure with the three remaining episodes during Summer.

Her hair was obviously a darker color when she was younger, and given that most of the people I’ve known who had sandy blond hair when they were young had it go darker to brown, I’m guessing that she dyes her hair now.

I thought it was a pretty good background for Kirino. And as I’ve somewhat alluded to throughout, I think that it’s somewhat natural for a little sister to follow the same path that Kirino did, as I’ve heard plenty of *real* people say they idolized their older sibling. I personally only have a younger brother, and I don’t think he ever looked up to me that much (we have almost completely different interests, actually), but it’s something I can imagine as true.

I feel the same way about having siblings. I have a brother and a sister. My brother and I have a two year age gap between us but we have completely different interests and I never felt that he looked up to me either.

I appreciate this point of view. In a few, very swift strokes, they were able to paint the underlying layer of this sister-brother relationship. And finally put paid to the distance between Kirino and Minami.

And again, “does she like him that way”. Can answer that. Status quo is god.

I was actually taken aback a little by Manami’s cheerful certainty / stubbornness with regards to Kyousuke’s revised attitude about things. Some of what I am spoiled on (that I don’t know if they’ll get to) is the reason she ‘got’ Kyousuke to change, and it also seems like she was more spiteful than usual in talking to Kirino at the time, where previously, the words “spite” and “Manami” having never been seen in the same zip code.